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Tearing Down All the Silos in a Company

This interview with F. Mark Gumz, president and C.E.O. of the Olympus Corporation of the Americas, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were some important early leadership lessons for you?

A. I was a humanities graduate with a major in English literature. I had never taken a business class. And I got a job early on with a great company, G.E. I was in sales, which I felt very comfortable in because I had been writing papers in college. I had to develop a thesis statement, and I had to prove that thesis. And depending on how well I did it, I got a certain grade. So I was confident that I could sell, and I was confident I could have conviction about what I was selling.

And so my boss said, “That’s good. But let me give you a few tips.” He said: “No. 1, don’t make any promises you can’t keep. No. 2, keep every promise that you make. No. 3, if you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know the answer. People will accept that you don’t know the answer. But what they can’t accept is if you tell them something that’s wrong, because they’re going to act on that. And then if you have to come back later with a different answer, you’ll lose credibility.

“And the other thing is, get back to me. If you say you’re going to get back to me with an answer, make sure you get back. If you do all those things, you’ll be successful.”

A. During the period that I had my own consulting business, I had some incredibly interesting partners who taught me a great deal about patience. I had been told something earlier in my career about this. I had a Japanese boss at Marubeni who said: “You think so quickly. Don’t blurt out the answer. Think twice about it. Reason it out. Because there’s a high likelihood you’re still going to come out with the answer before the other people. But if you do it too quickly, it looks like you didn’t think.”

Of course, I didn’t really listen to him that well. But years later, I’m in Korea, and I’m now in my 30s, so I’ve settled down a bit. And a business partner there said to me: “You know, Mark, there’s a certain amount of time that has to pass in any situation. And you can’t hurry time. You want things to conclude sooner than they can possibly conclude. You’ve just got to have the patience. If you try to rush things, it won’t go any faster than it’s going to go.”

Q.So how did that affect your leadership style?

A. I need to let people talk in meetings. Otherwise, why do I have those people? And I need to see who can make a decision and who can contribute. We have all this instant communication now. What I’ve learned from my experience working in Japan and Korea and other Asian countries is that they’ve been around for thousands of years, and they’ll take their time. And if you’re going to be successful in that part of the world, you’re going to have to develop patience.

Q. Any other lessons?

A. The one characteristic that came through with all the really good teachers I’ve had is passion. It may be overlooked as a leadership quality, but I think it’s really important. You have to be passionate about what you’re trying to do, to the point that people will follow what you want to do. And I think that when we look at failure — because I think it’s important to talk about failed leadership, as well — it more than likely occurred because the individual didn’t have enough of a commitment that came through, that people would take the leap of faith and follow. I think fire in the belly is not something that can be overestimated. If people really feel convinced that something is possible, they’re going to try.

Q. So you went from running your own business to Olympus, where you had worked early on in your career.

A. At that time, 11 years ago, we [the Olympus Corporation of the Americas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Olympus Corporation] probably had around 1,400 people and revenue of $1.1 billion. Today, we’re at 4,000, with revenue approaching $2.5 billion.

Q.And the largest staff that you had managed before that?

A. Going back to the Olympus Camera Corporation, probably 150 people.

Q. That was a big jump.

A. I wasn’t sure, at first, if this was the right thing for the company. I had been on my own for a long time. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to work within a corporate environment. I was used to making all my own decisions. And now I’m going to be part of a corporation. I also needed to make sure it was going to be right for me.

Photo

F. Mark Gumz, the president and C.E.O. of the Olympus Corporation of the Americas, says it's crucial for employees to get to know one another. “If you pull people together and share how they do things,” he says, “they work better.”Credit
Earl Wilson/The New York Times

The chairman of Olympus America at that time was Mr. Tsuyoshi Kikukawa. And he is now our global president. We had worked together, actually, back in 1976. We literally shared an office. And so we had a long relationship, and there was a lot of trust and confidence, which continues to this day. And so I knew that I had his backing and support. What he said to me, very firmly, was that the reason he wanted me to come back was to bring more structure, order and discipline to the organization. And he believed that I could do it.

A. When I came back, one of the things I observed was that we had a lot of new people, and because they were new, they didn’t have a real deep relationship with the company. And I sensed that because of our different businesses, a lot of silos had been created. I wanted to knock the silos down.

And so I made an effort to do that, initially tying people together at the wallet — with part of their compensation based on the overall performance of the company — and I focused on getting people to share processes that were working in different parts of the organization. You want people to know one another. If you pull people together and share how they do things, they work better.

Q.What are some of your other ideas about culture?

A. You have to share information. You have to have an open management system. And so our quarterly town hall meetings are critical. Good times or bad, you tell the story — people can deal with the information. You have coffees. You have lunches. You sit in the cafeteria, and move table to table. You encourage your team members to do the same. You have management meetings, and you have tables where you tell people where they’re going to sit — they don’t sit with the people they work with because you want them to meet new people.

We also do volunteer activities, and send our people out into the community. We put teams together, and you don’t know who you’re going to be working with. And it’s incredible what happens when people start to talk to other people in the business. We’re starting to see people moving around in the company — that’s how you build careers for people. I think that’s how a company becomes stronger and stronger, and that’s how passion is developed. It’s not a bad thing to give people an experience to take them out of their comfort zone. And if you do it often enough, people feel comfortable with trying new ideas.

Q. What else?

A. I don’t allow people to eat their lunch at their desk. You have to go to the cafe. I want you to take a break and talk to other people in the company. It’ll be the rule as long as I’m the C.E.O.

Q.How do you hire?

A. It’s not for me to vet the candidate. The interviews are more for candidates to be able to ask me questions. I want people to know that I know who they are. I want them to feel that this is a company that is not aloof, that this is a company that cares about their success.

Q.What about hiring direct reports?

A. I’m looking for commitment. I want to know why you want to be a part of our company. How much have you really researched about our company? And why do you want to leave the company you’re at now? I’m concerned about what I can’t see on your résumé.

Q. But a lot of people could finesse that answer without revealing too much, couldn’t they?

A. And then I would probably come back with, “What do you think the company will say when you come in and tell them you’re leaving, if we do make you an offer?” And why do I do that? Because I want to see if there’s some reason that they want to leave where they’re working now, and that they may bring that problem with them to us. Sometimes, of course, people will tell you what you want to hear. But you have to try and get behind that.

I may ask some other probing questions like: “Tell me a little bit about your current responsibilities. Tell me about the type of people you work with. Tell me how you motivate those people. Can you tell me some challenges you’ve had? Tell me a story where you had people issues, and how you resolved them.”

Q.And what things do you tell them?

A. I share with them that if you come to work in our company, you’re going to have to work hard. You’re going to have to be smart about your work. But you also have to be a nice person. And that may sound really simple, but it’s not. We’re a collegial group, and you’re not going to make it here if you are an outlier and if you’re going to try and change the company immediately. You’re going to have to merge into traffic.

You’re not going to come onto the highway at 80 miles an hour. If you do that, you’re going to cause an accident.

Q.If you could ask only two or three questions in a job interview, what would they be?

A. What have been the most successful parts of your career up to this point, and why? What have been the greatest challenges, and what did you do about those challenges? Were those challenges ones that you could take care of on your own, or did you have to work as part of a team?

Q.Why those?

A. I want to see how people measure themselves. If it’s financially related, that’s O.K., but it shouldn’t be the biggest thing. If they say, “people development,” I’m interested. If their focus is on the team over all, I’m interested.

Q. Any other things people should know about what it’s like to work for you?

A. If you were to come to work for me as a direct report, I would tell you that if you have a problem with somebody, bring them and the problem together to me, because we’ll resolve it. I don’t want to have a unilateral conversation, because it doesn’t serve any purpose. I’m trying to depoliticize, as much as possible. There’s still politics. People are people. But let’s try and talk. I think it’s working, because I’m not seeing a lot of people coming to my office with problems.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
A longer version is at nytimes.com
/ businessday. A collection of past interviews,
searchable by topic, is at
nytimes.com/corneroffice.

A version of this interview appears in print on February 13, 2011, on page BU2 of the New York edition with the headline: Tearing Down
All the Silos
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